Monday 12 January 2015

A Writer Writes

I'm not a wannabe fiction writer. I was once, a long time ago, but I reconciled myself to the fact that I don't have the patience, nor probably the talent. I'm a good writer, but I'm not a good storyteller. I'm good at thinking up ideas, and good at writing scenes, but fitting everything together into an interesting plot is beyond me. So just as I'll never open the bowling for the England cricket team, date any of the female members of S Club 7 or Eternal, or discover a new species of animal, nor will I ever fulfil my other adolescent dream of being a best-selling fantasy writer.

When I was a teenager, though, I read quite a lot of books about creative writing, in an effort to improve. Most of these are pretty useless, but two that stood out to me as being well worth reading are Stephen King's On Writing and Ben Bova's The Craft of Writing Science Fiction That Sells. As is often the case, the people who know what they're talking about are genre writers, rather than high-falutin' literary types.

The advice both men had that really stood out to me is this: if you want to be "a creative" of whatever stripe, stop dicking around and just do it. Ben Bova boils this down to the simplest and most efficient statement possible: if you want to be a writer, write. A writer writes. (He may have been paraphrasing Harlan Ellison.)

King's advice is probably more extreme, and it's this: if you're not doing it already - writing every day simply for the love of it - you're probably never going to make it. If you're forcing yourself to write every day, so that it feels like a chore, it's a bad sign. Writers who end up being succesful are very often the ones who simply have to write every day, and it's the not writing that feels like work. (Adam Roberts said something like this once at a reading I was at; when he's writing he often gets into a fugue state in which hours of complete bliss feel like they're passing by in the blink of an eye.)

Anyway, the point is, thinking is overrated. In life, if you want to do something, do it. Writing my PhD thesis taught me this as much as anything: what you create will never be as good as what you imagine, but those 100,000 words aren't going to write themselves, so you'd better pull your finger out of your arse and get typing. I've, eventually, managed to do the same thing with Yoon-Suin: the thing has been written only because I've spent god-knows-how-many-hours sitting down and just bloody writing it.

So to anyone reading this who is thinking of writing a game or an adventure or a campaign setting or anything else, let this be my message to you: if you want to write a game or an aventure or a campaign setting or anything else, then write a game or an adventure or a campaign setting or anything else. It's not quite as pithy as "If you want to be a writer, write", but we can't all be Harlan Ellison, can we?

14 comments:

  1. King is full of crap. Listen to Bova. Just sit down and start writing. It is a hell of a lot easier if you like your own writing and if you enjoy the process, but there is a different way of doing the work for every single writer.

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  2. A good friend of mine once asked Neil Gaiman for advice at a con. I wasn't there and it's been many years but the paraphrased version of his response was "Finish it, cringe later." And that has been a mantra of mine ever since. I don't always DO it, but I always, always, ALWAYS strive for it. Finish it.

    Good post, btw. Thanks.

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    1. Yeah, "finish it, cringe later" is brilliant advice and a lesson which I think I have finally learned - certainly when it comes to academic writing.

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    2. Yes, that is probably the single most important step in any creative endeavor (actually ANY endeavor or goal) - silencing the Internal Critic. Get that idea, framework, plot, story out there, don't worry about the holes the inconsistencies, the bad mechanics. If the project never starts, how can it be finished?

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    3. Currently carving "FINISH IT, CRINGE LATER" into the wall near my monitor. Thank you for sharing that.

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  3. Yes, I also tried to be a Writer many years ago, without much success. Anyway, like many topics, every writer has their own approach and opinions on the craft. I have two writers-on-writing books "Just Open a Vein," by William Brohaugh, and "On Being a Writer," by Bill Strickland. I'd say pick the author who's mechanism matches your own and go for it...
    Yes, we have King's book around too, but haven't read it. My wife just finished Anne Lamont's "Bird by Bird" and got a lot out if it.

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    1. The King book is really good. It also functions as a kind of autobiography. I'm not the world's biggest fan of King's fiction, although I really like some of his books, but On Writing is just a really good and interesting read.

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  4. Writing is good, but finishing is what you really need to do.

    6 years ago I started writing a novel. I wrote probably 6 hours a day for 4 months. I had basically 3 Harry Potter's worth of text, but not anywhere near a finish.

    And now years later, I have 4 more halfway finished novels that are already way too long.

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  5. Good stuff to remember. I also have King's On Writing, and have read it a couple times...I find there's a lot of good advice in it.

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  6. A writer has talent, that's all that's crucial. This is almost impossible to recognise in one-self.

    Next, a writer READS. If you have difficulty reading literature then you are not a writer. And if you don't know what literature is then you are not a writer.

    In my experience among forums and blogs for about five years, there are about ten guys competent to write non-fiction but Ive seen no-one who could write fiction.

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    1. I'm curious, when you're at a party do you find that the people nearest you often excuse themselves to the restroom/bar/coat check?

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    2. My theory is that it's a kind of quasi-"Picture of Dorian Gray" situation where the real life Kent is super nice, but is only able to remain so by maintaining a completely abrasive and unlikable online persona.

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  7. I beliefe I am the worlds worst RPG-Writer, (I dont even have the basic language skills in english), but its a passion of mine. And yep, I had read that King book, in my "I am the next Tolkien" youngster phase too. Now half a life later, I actually follow that, and scribble down some words and sketches in my heartbreaker games every day :D

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